She Mt 
0f the ffltckeb King 



^i^-^K 



A Storu from the f felb 
0f llackbfrbs 

By 
Ernest Bruncken 



WASHINGTON. D.C. 

HERMANN G. WINKLER 

1915. 



Ihe Sale 



af the Mltkth King 



A ^lory frnm the Jirlh 
of llackbirbs 



By 

Ernest Bruncken 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

HERMANN G. WINKLER 

191S. 



Copyright 1915 

by 

Ernest Bruncken. 



DEC 27 1915 



^ 



i^ 



^'\ 



CI,A4192J9 



This is how Grandmother will tell the story, a hun- 
dred years hence: 

Once upon a time, there was a man whose father 
had been a king but had been deposed because his 
subjects thought him to be an unjust ruler. The man 
lived in a far-away city, but every day he plotted and 
schemed how he could recover the throne from which 
his father had been cast. Finally he found some am- 
bitious and wicked young men who promised to help 
him. One dark night, they managed to get into the 
castle of the new king, who was peacefully sleeping 
with his queen. They broke into the chamber of the 
royal couple and murdered both in their bed. Then 
they threw the bodies out of the window, and forth- 
with sent for the man in the far-off city. He had 
been waiting for the news, and straightway came to 
his native country, and for many years was king in 
place of the murdered one. The young men who had 
assassinated their true king were made generals and 
counsellors, and one became prime minister, and all 
were very rich and powerful, and the people of the 
country were afraid; so they tolerated the wicked 
king and his band of assassins over them. 

The king made a war upon one of the neighboring 
kingdoms, and took much land away from it, which 



was to be divided between himself and some other 
kings who had helped him; but the wicked king was 
faithless even to his friends. He set upon one of his 
allies, and beat him sorely, and took most of the con- 
quered land that should have gone to his friend for 
himself. 

Being prosperous, the wicked king became more 
and more ambitious. His kingdom was not very 
large, but he heard that there were some dissensions 
in the country of the emperor who lived on the other 
side of the Great River. So he told his son, who was 
as faithless and wicked as the old king himself, to 
persuade some of the emperor's people to betray their 
country and join the wicked king's people. The 
king's son succeeded in finding some men who were 
as wicked as himself, and when the prince, who was 
to be emperor when the old emperor should have 
died, visited one of his cities near the boundary of 
the wicked king, they threw a bomb at him and killed 
both him and his beautiful wife. 

Then the Aged Emperor brought together a great 
army to punish the assassins, and his Brother-in-Arms 
with all his people came to help him.. Thereupon the 
assassin king was very much afraid, and he called on 
the Emperor of the Frozen North to come to his res- 
cue, for it was well known that he hated the Aged 
Emperor and his Brother-in-Arms. He also sent for 
help to the people of the Western Isles, who had more 



ships and more gold than anybody else in the world. 
Both of these promised to help, and the people of the 
Western Isles paid out quite a little money to hire 
somebody to fight for the wicked king; for they did 
not believe much in fighting themselves. 

Then the Aged Emperor's army came across the 
Great River, and took the palace and city of the 
wicked king, and drove him farther and farther. And 
the friend who had been robbed also came with his 
soldiers to take back what belonged to him. Every 
day the wicked king climbed upon some mountain 
and looked to the east to see whether the armies of 
the Emperor of the Frozen North were not coming to 
help him. But nobody came. For the aged emperor 
and his brother-in-arms had sent armies against the 
Frozen North also, and the hosts of the North and 
East were being beaten and had to flee for their lives. 
For Justice with her scales and the bright star of 
Right on her forehead marched ahead of the Aged Em- 
peror's army. Then the wicked king looked to the 
South for the hirelings of the people of the Western 
Isles, but none of them came. Then he ran down 
the hill, as fast as he could, for the enemy was ap- 
proaching. He jumped into his motor wagon and 
rode farther and farther, and the next day it was the 
same, and the next, and the day after that. Of his 
soldiers, some were killed by the enemy, some were 
taken prisoners, and many more threw away their 



arms and went home. For a wicked ruler has no 
friends except through fear or lust of gain, and no- 
body longer feared the king, and he had nothing 
more to give. 

Finally, there were but a few soldiers left about the 
king and his son. Then the motor wagon broke 
down, and he had to get into a rickety wagon with a 
sprained, half-starved horse that a poor peasant gave 
him out of pity. So he kept on, as long as the horse 
would go, ever farther into the snow-covered wilder- 
ness of the mountains, until he was lost to human 
sight. 



/ 



